The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  dun'coloured thunderheads reared to the heavens, menacing and ominous,

  fonning their own mighty ranges that dwarfed the mountains beneath them.

  At any time the downpour might ed, begin up there in the highlands. Once

  that happen Sapper wondered how long it would take the flood waters to

  reach them here in the Abbay gorge.

  He dismounted stiffly from the tractor, and went down the bank to

  inspect his stone markers. The water level had fallen almost a foot in

  the past hour. He forced himself not to let his optimism bubble over -

  after all, it had taken only fifteen minutes for the river to -rise the

  same amount.

  would come.

  The final outcome was inevitable. The rains rst. He looked The river

  would spate. The dam would bu at the dam wall, and shook his head with

  fill downstream resignation.

  He had done as much as possible to delay that moment. He had raised the

  level of the dam wall almost four feet, and packed in another buttress

  behind the wall to strengthen it. There was nothing further for him to

  do, and he could only wait.

  Climbing up the bank, he leaned wearily against the yellow steel of his

  machine and looked across at his team of Buffaloes, strewn along the

  bank like casualties on a battlefield. They had worked for two days to

  hold back the waters, and now they were exhausted. He knew that he could

  not call on them for another effort; the next time the river attacked,

  it would overwhelm them.

  He saw some of the men stir and sit up, and their faces turned upstream.

  He heard their voices faint on the wind.

  Something was exciting their interest. He climbed up on to the tractor

  and shaded his eyes, The unmistakable figure of Mek Nimmur was coming

  down the trail from the direction of the escarpment, stocky and powerful

  in his camo fatigues, his gait determined. He was accompanied by two of

  his company commanders.

  Mek hailed Sapper from a distance. "How is your dam holding?" he called

  in Arabic, which Sapper did not understand. "Soon it will rain on the

  mountains, You won't be able to hold out here much longer." But his

  gestures towards sky and river were immediately intelligible to Sapper.

  Sapper jumped down from the machine to gr,6et him, and they shook hands

  cordially. They had recognized in each other the qualities of strength

  and professionalism that they both admired.

  Mek seized his company commander, who spoke English, by the arm, and the

  man fell into his by now familiar role of interpreter.

  "It is not only the weather that troubles me," Mek confided in a low

  voice, and the interpreter relayed the information to Sapper. "I have

  reports that the governMent troops are moving into position to attack

  us. My intelligence is that they have a full battalion moving down this

  way from Debra Maryam, and another force low the monastery at St.

  Frumentius, moving up the be Abbay river."

  "Pincer movement, heyT said Sapper.

  Mek listened to the translation and nodded gravely. "I am heavily

  outnumbered and I don't know how long I will they attack. My men are be

  able to hold them when gueff illas. It is not our role to fight

  set-piece battles. It is the war of the flea for us. Hit and run. I came

  to warn You at short notice."

  to be ready to Pull out Sapper grunted. , "Don't worry too much about

  am a sprinter. Hundred yards dash is my speciality. It's Nicholas and

  ROYan you should be thinking of, them in that ruddy rabbit warren of

  theirs."

  but I wanted to arrange

  "I am on my way to them now a fall'back position. if we get cut off from

  each other in the the monastery.

  fighting, Nicholas has cached the boats at That is where we will

  assemble."

  okay Mek---2 Sapper stopped speaking and all three I the trail, where

  there was a fresh of them looked bank. "What's disturbance amongst the

  men along the going on?"

  Mek one of my patrols coming in narrowed his eyes.

  "Mere must be some new development." He stopped not understand speaking

  as he realized that Sapper could him, and then his expression changed as

  he recognized the small, slim figure that was being carried on a rough

  litter by thing-_ men of his patrol.

  towards, her and sat up weakly Tessay saw him running her to the ground

  and Mek on the litter. The men lowered the litter and placed both went

  down on his knees beside They held each other in silence for a his arms

  airoun(:

  her face in his Mek gently cupped long moment. Then features.

  hands and examined her swollen and arre Some of the burns had become

  infected, and her eyes were slits beneath the bloated lids.

  "Who did this to you?"he asked softly.

  She mumbled incoherently through her black-scabbed lips. They made me

  No! Don't try to talk." He changed his mind as her lower lip cracked

  open and a droplet of fresh blood welled up and glistened like a ruby on

  her skin.

  "I have to tell you," she insisted in a broken whisper.

  "They made me tell them everything. The numbers of your men. What you

  and Nicholas are doing here. Everything. I am sorry, Mek. I betrayed

  you."

  "Who was it? Who did this to you?"

  "Nogo and the American, Helm,' she said, and although he embraced her as

  gently as a father with his infant in his arms, his eyes were terrible.

  /4P- -I he lowed chamber of the tunnel was cleared of gas at last.

  Hansith's fire burned bright and steady in the middle of the floor, the

  rising hot air wafting away the noxious vapours and dispersing them

  through the upper levels of the maze, where they mingled with

  the'cleaner oxygen-rich air and lost their toxicity. By this time Royan

  had fully recovered from the physical effects of the gassing, but her

  confidence was shaken, and she allowed Nicholas to lead the way up the

  steps that rose from the far side of the chamber.

  "It's the perfect gas trap," Nicholas pointed out to her as they climbed

  cautiously. "No doubt at all that Taita knew exactly what he was doing

  -when he built this section of the tunnel."

  "Surely he must have expected any interloper of his period to have

  either succumbed to his hellish devices, lost his way in the maze, or

  given up and turned back by now," she reasoned.

  "Are you trying to convince me that this was Taita's last line of

  defence, and that he has no more tricks in store for us? Is that it?"

  Nicholas asked as he took another step upwards.

  "No. Actually I was trying to convince myself, and not having much

  success. I just don't trust him one little bit any more. I have come to

  expect the worst from him. I expect the roof to collapse on me at any

  moment, or the floor to open and drop us into a fiery furnace or

  something worse." They had descended forty steps down into the se they

  were now climbing was a chamber, and the stairca mirror image of that.

  It rose at the same angle and the tread of each step was the same depth

  and width. As their heads rose above the fortieth step, Nicholas played

  the beam of the lamp down the spacious, level arcade that en
ed before

  them, and they were dazzled by a riot of OP

  colour and pattern, bright and lovely as a field' of desert blooms after

  rain. The paintings covered the walls and ceiling of the arcade,

  stunning in their profusion, wondrous in their execution.

  "Taita!l Royan cried in a voice that quivered and broke. "These are his

  paintings. There is no other artist like him, I could never mistake it.

  I would know his work anywhere."

  stood on the top step and gazed around in They wonder. When compared to

  these, the murals in the long gallery seemed pale and stilted, the

  tawdry sham that they the work of a great master, a timeless really

  were. This was genius, whose art could enchant and enrapture now just as

  readily as it had four thousand years ago. involuntarily, They moved

  forward slowly, almost down the arcade. It was lined on each side with

  small ntal bazaar. The entrance chambers, like the stalls in an orie

  ched up to the to each was guarded by tall columns that rea roof. Each

  column was a carved statue of one member of the pantheon of gods.

  Between them they held the high vaulted ceiling suspended.

  As they drew level with the first two stalls, Nicholas stopped and

  squeezed her arm.

  "The treasure chambers of Pharaoh he whispered.

  The stalls were packed from floor to ceiling with wonderful and

  beautiful things.

  "The furniture store." Royan's voice was as reverential as his as she

  recognized the shapes of chairs and stools and beds and divans. She went

  to the nearest chamber and touched a royal throne. The arms were twining

  serpents of bronze and lapis lazuli. The legs were those of lions with

  claws of gold. The seat and back were chased with scenes of the hunt,

  and wings of gold surmounted the high back.

  Stacked behind the throne was a great Profusion of other furniture. They

  recognized a screened divan, its sides enclosed in an exquisite lacework

  of ebony and ivory. But there were dozens of other items besides, most

  of them broken down into their separate Parts so that it was not

  possible to guess what they were. They gleamed with precious metals and

  coloured stones in such confusion and variety that it was too much to

  take in in a single glance.

  Both the alcoves on either side of the arcade were stuffed with these

  marvelous collections. Royan shook her head in wonder, and Nicholas led

  her on. The walls that separated the alcoves were decorated with panels

  illustrate in the Book of the Dead, and the journey of Pharaoh through

  the pylons, the dangers and the trials, the demons and the monsters that

  awaited him along the way.

  "These are the paintings that were missing from the mock tomb in the

  long gallery," Royan told him. "But just look upon the face of the king,

  You can see he was a real person. Those are perfect royal portraits."

  The mural beside them depicted the great god Osiris leading Pharaoh by

  the hand, protecting him from the crowded close on either hand, waiting

  thei monsters that showed the face of the king as he chance to devour

  him. I with a kind and gentle, if must truly have been, a man rather

  weak, face.

  "Look at the figures," Nicholas agreed. "They are not forward with the

  right stiff wooden dolls always stepping foot. These are real men and

  women. They are anatomic and had cally correct. The artist understood

  perspectiv studied the human body."

  They came to the next pair of alcoves, and paused to peer into them.

  "Weapons," said Nicholas. just look at that chariot The panels of the

  chariot were covered with a skin of old leaf, so that it dazzled the

  eye. The harness and traces the horses that would draw it into seemed

  only to await and the quivers strapped to the side panels behind battle,

  elins. The each tall wheel bulged with arrows and jav was emblazoned on

  the side panels.

  cartouche of Mamose significant vehicle were war bows Piled beside this

  of electrum and bronze whose stocks were bound with wir ays of daggers

  with ivory handles and gold. There were arr and swords with blades of

  glistening bronze. There were racks of spears and pikes. There were

  shields of bronze, the targets decorated with scenes of war and the name

  of the se. There were helmets and breastplates made divine Mamo from the

  skin of the crocodile, and the uniforms and regalia of the famous

  regiments of Egypt dressed the life-sized the wooden statues of the king

  that stood in rows against walls of the alcoves.

  a They walked on down the isle, between more paint, death of the icting

  the life and the ings and murals dep ters and danking. They saw him

  playing with his daugh nt son. They saw him fishing and hunting and

  dling his infa isn'omarches, hawking, in council with his ministers and

  dallying with his wives and concubines, and feasting with the priests of

  the temple.

  What a chronicle of life in ancient times," Royan breathed with awe.

  "There has never been a discovery remotely like this before." Each of

  the persons in the panels had obviously been drawn from life. They were

  real breathing living men and women, every face and every expression

  different, captured with the keen eye, the humour and he great humanity

  of the artist.

  "That must be Taita himself." Royan pointed out the self-portrait of the

  eunuch in one of the central panels. "I wonder if he took poetic

  licence, or was he truly so noble and beautiful?"

  They paused to admire the face of Taita, their adversary, and looked

  into his searching, intelligent eyes. Such was the skill of the artist

  that he watched them as keenly as they studied him. A small, enigmatic

  smile played on Taita's lips. The painting had been varnished, so that

  it was perfectly preserved, as if it had been painted the day before.

  Taita's lips seemed moist and his eyes gleamed softly with life.

  "His complexion is fair and his eyes are blue!" Royan exclaimed.

  "Although that red hair is almost certainly dyed with henna."

  "It is weird to think that, although he lived so long ago, he almost

  succeeded in killing us,'Nicholas said softly.

  "In what land was he born? He never tells us that in the scrolls. Was it

  Greeceor Italy? Was he from one of the Germanic tribes, or was he of

  Viking stock? We will never know, for he himself probably did not know

  his own origins."

  "There he, is again in the next panel." Nicholas pointed down the arcade

  to where the unmistakable face of the eunuch appeared in the throng that

  knelt in homage before the throne on which sat Pharaoh and his queen.

  "Like Hitchcock, he seems to like to appear in his own creations."

  They went on past the treasure stalls in which were stored plates and

  goblets and bowls of alabaster and bronze chased with silver and gold,

  polished bronze mirrors and rolls of precious silk and linen and woollen

  cloth that had long ago rotted to shaggy black amorphous heaps. On the

  walls that divided these from the next set of stalls they saw reenacted

  the battle with the Hyksos in which Pharaoh had been struck down, the

  arrow shot by the Hyksos king lodge
d in his breast. Then in the next

  panel Taita, the surgeon, bent Over him with the surgical instruments in

  his ed barb from deep in his hands, removing the blood-smear flesh.

  Now they came to alcoves in which were stacked hundreds of cedarwood

  chests. The boxes were painted with the royal cartouche of Mamose, and

  with scenes of the king at his toilet: lining his eyes with kohl,

  painting his face with white antimony and scarlet rouge, being shaved by

  his barbers and dressed by his valets.

  "Some of those chests will contain the royal cosmetics," Royan murmured,

  'and some of them will be Pharaoh's wardrobes of clothing. There will be

  costumes in them for ack every occasion in his after-life. I long to be

  able to unp and examine them."

  all panels showed the mart iage of the The next set of king to the

  young virgin, Taita's mistress. The face of Queen LostTis was tendered

  with loving detail. The artist gloated on her beauty and exaggerated it,

  his brush strokes caressing her naked breasts and lingering on all her

  virtues until they epitomized feminine perfection.

  "How much Taita loved her," Royan murmured, and there was envy in her

  voice. "You can see it in every line he drew."

  Nicholas smiled softly and put his arms around her shoulders.

  There were hundreds more wooden chests stacked in the next alcoves.

  Painted on the lids were miniatures of the king decked in all his

  jewellery: his fingers and toes were thick with rings and his chest was

  covered with pectoral medallions, while bangles of gold adorned his arms

  and bracelets his wrists. In one portrait he wore the double crown of

  the two kingdoms of Egypt united, the red crown and the white with the

  heads of the vulture and the cobra on his brow. In another he wore the

  blue war crown, and on a third the Nemes crown with gold and lapis wings

  that covered his ears.

  "If each of those chests contains the treasures depicted on its lid-'

  Nicholas broke off, unable to continue the thought. The possibility of

  such riches was daunting, and the imagination balked at the magnitude of

  it.

  "Do you remember what Taita wrote in the scrolls? "I cannot believe that

  such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one times'T

  Royan asked him. "It seeffLs that it is all still here, every single gem

  and grain of gold. The treasure of Mamose is intact."